Employee recognition and engagement
Is Recognition More Important as a Driver of Employee Engagement to Gen Y Than to Baby Boomers?
The Melcrum Blog just published the results of a poll over whether “recoginition [is] like heroin, where you need more and more to get the same effect”. Here’s my personal response …
Recognition as a driver of employee engagement
Yes, recognition has been shown to be one of the drivers of employee engagement, so your poll results certainly are interesting. I’m a baby Boomer (upper end) and I have to confess that I do like recognition ONLY IF it is private and personal – please don’t call me out front and make a public fuss!
Recognition is a basic human need, and my observation across 40 years of working life is that there are generational preferences AND individual preferences within generations regarding HOW recognition is received – public or private, verbal or written, email or letter, formal or informal, encouraging words or a gift/monetary token and so on …
Employee recognition must be authentic
One word of caution about giving recognition – it has to be sincere and deserved. Fake praise has been shown to be more damaging to employee engagement than no recognition at all.
If you think of recognition simply as an encouraging expression of appreciation for a job well done, why would you NOT give recognition where it’s due? After all, research shows that GIVING recognition when it is deserved boosts the production of “feel good” chemicals for the GIVER as well as the RECEIVER!
More ways to drive employee engagement
As a representative of the training and professional development industry I have written a connsumer’s guide that demonstrates why increasing employee engagement must be the number one focus of small business owners who want to be maximized managers and accelerate the performance of the people they manage. You can request your complementary copy of “The Consumer’s Guide To Engaging a Training and Professional Development Provider” here.